Friday, July 24, 2009

First, I'd like to say that I really appreciate folks taking the time to look at their fellow tanks in their raiding guilds and do their own legwork on this. It was good to get largely reasonable confirmation that the numbers were correct for other people and that the relative numbers compared to other tanks were at least on par. It gave me some insight as to what is fair and reasonable. For instance - is it okay if druids are below warriors sometimes, depending on gear choices and profession choices? Must they be a bit higher?

But in the end, I think that this sort of stamina nerf would be fair and reasonable across the board, relative to tanks.

The question that wasn't asked but should always be is this: is it fun? Well, clearly being nerfed is never, ever fun. On the flip side, being sat because someone else happens to be playing an overpowered class isn't much fun either. So balance is somewhat important for a lot of people in raiding guilds fighting to get a spot in that guild.

But how many of those out there are there, really? How many people would be benched if (for example) paladins, not druids, had the 15% health lead?

It's not an easy thing to answer. With DPS, it's very simple: either you bring amazingly useful buffs for the rest of the DPS or the raid, or you put out great DPS. This is mitigated by things like 'do you stand in stuff' and 'do you loot whore', but for the most part, we know where DPS stand. If you buffed one class's DPS by 20% over others, tons of people would reroll to that class, and tons of people would welcome them with open arms into raiding.

With healing and tanking I think it comes much more down to the player, not the class. Healing has occasionally been measured by healing meters (which is stupid), but most of the time you bring the healer with the mechanical capabilities you need (Chain Heal, CoH, MC, whatever) or the better role to play (awesome tank heal, awesome movement, etc). It rarely comes down to raw healing output. It's not nearly as quantifiable.

And even less quantifiable is tanking. Tanking has a lot to do with odds and minimizing odds. It has much more to do with being in the right place at the right time, using your abilities the right way, and allowing others to do the right thing. Yes, you can look at health and armor and avoidance and make guesses as to how well a tank could do compared to another tank - and that does happen from time to time. But the bigger limiter isn't class; it's skill.

Now, with DKs a couple things happened. For starters, they were really stupidly overpowered. It wasn't a small degree, it was a huge one. Second, their abilities matched up really well to the encounters. But most importantly, every guild had a TON of DKs waiting in the wings. If you needed another tank, plenty of people would chime in and be happy to go to town. With Naxx, alts had gear, main specs had secondary pieces, etc. It was easy to find a DK with enough stuff ready to tank at least at a decent level, gear wise - and with their overpowered abilities and stats they could find success.

But is the same thing true for ferals? Not really. Having to start from level 1 on a reroll of the flavor of the month is a big difference than getting a ridiculously geared 55 that rolls through early content. Are there a lot of guilds out there with feral tanks waiting to burst on the scene? I don't think that's really true. I can't reasonably study spec/class populations in raids and who gets to do what; I'll leave that to the smarter folks like Flyv. But anecdotally, I hear a lot about not many ferals are seen tanking, or many have chosen to do DPS more than not. It's hard to find a feral tank on my server, and harder to find a good one. Anecdotally, I don't think the population of good feral tanks is particularly high.

So if there's no real danger of people rolling a new feral, and not a lot of guilds have ferals, is it okay if they're not balanced?

I used to think no - it's never okay that they're not balanced. It's not good for the game no matter what. But I talked it over with my wife, and she changed my mind.

The thing is, people do want to have fun playing their character. Some people have fun playing the underdog type - the one that is underpowered but they want to show that they're so awesome they can do well with it anyway. (this, I think, applies to a LOT of protection paladins out there, or did - I know it did for me when I was playing it). Others want to be creative and figure out new, better ways to do old things.

Others want to feel needed - that something they bring to the table isn't done by others. That makes them feel important .

And others simply want to feel like they're super powerful - not only relative to the content they're fighting, but relative to other players. They want to nuke everything and laugh. They want the big numbers, the big crits, the giant stamina. Heck, some don't even care if they're ridiculously awesome tanks; high stamina beats overall survivability, right? It certainly can when trying to find a PUG.

Everyone feels these to some degree or other, but the point is that all of these things exist for people. And I think for a lot of people, if you took away the health and armor advantages that druids have, they'd really cease to be fun. At that point, they wouldn't be overpowered relative to other tanks. They'd be the same - except they'd have worse cooldowns, a more boring rotation, no armor graphics, weird buggy behavior, odd itemization and no real unique abilities.

If you get rid of that, what's left? And it's not a matter of 'why would you bring one' - you'd bring one because they're a good tank, and good tanks are in short supply. No, it's a matter of 'why would you play one?' I think Blizzard did a really exemplary job of making the death knight not only viable but really fun to play; the resource system and the way the trees work along with the graphical awesomeness of the DK made for an excellent hook.

But I don't know whether bears really have those sorts of things.

I'm not saying that everyone would abandon ship if something like a nerf in health combined with a fixing of cooldowns happened. I know I wouldn't; I'd once again figure out how things worked and move on the best I could. Many others I know are the same; they're happy because they can MT anything and do it well, and they're no longer constrained by stupid mechanics requiring shields. Others are just happy they get to tank at all. Yet others really love playing druids because druids are awesome in their own right.

But I do think for many people it would make them change. It would remove the parts of being a druid tank that are fun for them - the big numbers, the feeling like a mighty meat shield. With that gone, they'd move to something that gave them that feeling in some other way.

So right now, I'm not really supporting any big nerf like this would be. Maybe next expansion bears can be revisited heavily, and when that happens things like making bears care more about druid abilities, rotations, interesting shifting mechanics, resource management, itemization and graphics can be fixed. And if bears need a stamina nerf now, perhaps a small one will work to do the trick and balance them reasonably.

But I don't think there's a need for it, not yet at least. Because sometimes, fair and balanced isn't what people want, and it's not what's actually fun.

31 comments:

Wow, well for once I have to agree with you entirely, every sentence and every thought. I count this as a major breakthrough my dear tanking colleague, because there's not a single shred of math to prove any of your conclusions. I would say that with this single post, you have demonstrated to me that you understand more about wow's design than 50 more posts abot gear, block, stamina and fire resistance would ever convince me. Keep up the great work. Being avidly multidimensional in ones thinking is a good thing, and very rare, in wow as in other areas of life.

I agree absolutely with this post. I think it would be a mistake to nerf feral tanks now, even slightly, because *any* nerf will push players away from the spec; not necessarily very many but, as you say, there aren't very many bears out there right now. I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people abandoned their bears after the nerfs in 3.1 which, while required, left a bad taste in some mouths. I don't think it's worth risking the spec population over a smallish nerf, and I expect Blizzard feel similarly.

I agree to the point that Bear's health and time to live scales too well with STA - mostly because there is not much else. But I don't see the need to nerf it, because the way the game currently works.

a) CDs have become more important then high health - a CD saves the day, but the differences between 2 tanks in health are not big enough that a bear can take more hits.

If the tank is hit with 20k, Warrior has 40k and Druid 50.... it does not really matter with all the overhealing, Mana still not the real issue, and MT healers spamming the biggest heals because it's the only way to keep the tank alive.

b) if you stack STA only your threat is taking a hit

In my experience (ok, we are not that good a guild still working for our first Yoggi 25 kill) the issue is less the enrage timer - it's more keeping the fight short and DPS happy. IMHO if your DPS is threat capped they loose concentration, and errors will come.

I met a bear tank last week in Sunwell, who exactly went the STA route - PvP gear, STA trinket, Jeweler and Leatherworking... 53k HP... wow..... as Cat I could out-threat him while almost sleeping even if he got enough time and was never rage starved.

c) I'm convinced that the 5% difference in avoidance are more worth then just "less damage dealt" - with hits bosses also often apply stacking debuffs. Evading one of them is double helpful.

d) let's assume for a moment we bring all tanks in line - so Bears loose damage, health and armor, get more avoidance AND CDs AND threat AND a bigger toolbox (can someone say "interrupt" or "shield slam") - and then the difference between Bear and Warrior/DK/Paladin is only the graphics. I'd like a little bit more flavour please.

As GC stated on the forum....there is some value in simply watching the tank distribution. I'd agree that bears currently are a touch too strong - but think the solution should not be in reducing health further - but rather cutting harsh down on avoidance (for all tanks btw)

Seriously, Feral tanks have nothing that is perceived as special by most groups.

Sure, we have some pretty cool.. downs... lol... as well but no one seems to know or care about what they are. I don't heal, but I don't hear healers saying "no, we really want the bear tank because his cool downs will make this easy"

Pally in the hallway at Thorim can free themselves from the hamstring. They can also cleanse themselves on Steelbreaker... Warriors can disarm in the arena... it goes on and on.

Us bears no longer stand out for anything... and that is why I am happy to be in Kitty just about exclusively now.

Sorry if that was very eloquent but I am usually typing this stuff between chasing my 2 year old around the house.

We're definitely at a point where all the tanks are close enough that skill is a deciding factor, not class.

I agree entirely with K here: you could nerd bears, and it may be justified, but really you'd just be slapping players who've got nothing else anyways. I know I stopped bear tanking (as my primary role) with wotLK, because kitty dps was fun due to the complicated 'rotation'. I tanked in Vanilla wow as a feral because it was HARD, and just kept with it into BC but lost interest in it (and stopped playing entirely) after a few months. It wasn't hard anymore, it just became boring.

I wouldn't want bears to go back to being heavily disadvantaged tanking, don't gete wrong. I just want bears to be more interesting to tank with. All they have of interest right now is big health pools, and that's not an interactive feature really.

I want more tools, more situational abilities, more stats to be useful so that there are actually hard choices to make when gearing. Give me that, and nerd stamina all you want, I'll be happy.

This post seemed a lot more real and it's nice to see that side of you, K. The one that shows you're not all numbers and a person enjoying their class.

I agree with this post 100%. All tanks are close enough that each and everyone of them can tank all encounters. Some may be more advantaged than others on certain fights but I think that adds a bit of flavour.

I'm a bear, and I enjoy it. I don't like having such limited abilities and apart from Leader of the Pack, I don't feel like I bring anything to the raid. I don't enjoy having to spam swipe to keep aggro on groups of mobs. I enjoy being at least an option for main tanking a boss because I have high armor and health. But aside from that - we do have nothing.

Our tanks for Uld25 are: DK tank, Warrior tank, Pally tank... and our boomkin swaps to his tanking 2nd spec if we need him to--as in, one of the other tanks is taking the night off.

There's no point in gearing up more tanks than you need and more often than not you need cooldowns more than a giant health pool.

Going through Uld, besides Thorim the only hardmode I've seen that I can really go "yeah a druid would be reeeeally good for that" would be Steelbreaker. And for that, the druid just doesn't have enough cooldowns to make them viable.

So I guess my point is, sure, people who have Bears around and love and adore them probably keep them. But at least on my server, I don't know a single guild in any level of progression LOOKING for a feral druid, and it's been that way for all of WotLK. So what's the big problem with having a giant health pool?

My druid's currently nicely Naxx-25 geared and would be brought to Uld10 as mainly kitty with some bear action every once in a while. I rolled my bear because my main's a priest and I'm squishy as hell and I'd really like to go RAWR at some big mean nasties. I don't wanna scratch their rears.

You have 4 tanks, one of each class. All 4 are very capable players, know their stuff, never screw up.

Which one do you pick to tank and which do you pick to DPS on any given encounter seeing that they are all dual spec for Tank/DPS.

What I have seen is the Feral druid will be the first to be asked to DPS instead of tank. Our gear itemization makes us the first choice to make the swap. Warrior DPS is not that great, most raids LOVE DK CD's, Pally would need just about 2 full sets of gear to swap and keep up.

There are no fights (except Thorim Hard) where you would pick the druid to stay the tank.

That is what I think is the issue and why you are seeing more druids in kitty form.

Put back fights that lean to ferals tanking them so we get to tank something every now and again.

Sure, we can MT everything in the game right now, but as GC pointed out... we don't.

What I have seen is the Feral druid will be the first to be asked to DPS instead of tank

This is exactly the problem I pointed out in the first screw bears by nerfing them to the ground post.

Most small guilds have tons of non-druids who "can" tank. Pallies, death knights, warriors - whether they actually do or not is a different issue, but they do enough that ferals are often forced into DPS. I, for one, don't want to DPS on my druid. If I want to DPS, I'll play my mage or my DK or my shadow priest. I want to tank on my druid.

Every time Bears get nerfed, I get more pressure and fewer chances because of it. And all proposals like Kalon's do is take the fun out of playing a druid because they just server to reduce our opportunities further. If things keep trending like they have been, Druids are going to be stuck in a position like they were in Vanilla, where they are given one opportunity - DPS (okay, 2 if you can stomach healing ever again after having raided in vanilla) and anyone who wants to tank will be shown the door.

We're in no danger of bears not being *allowed* to tank - unless you've got a shitty guild anyways. The reality is that bears are really just as good of tanks as any other.

The problem is that they're very good at their other roles too, whereas the other classes... not so much.

This is often due, I think, to a high degree of crossover between bear and cat gear. Yes, it's different. Yes, you enchant/gem differently. But there are a lot of pieces that while not optimal are certainly not BAD in either role.

Even aside from bear/cat; other common druid specs are very useful to have too. Obviously, resto is always wanted, and boomkin bring a very nice raid buff too if you're not getting it elsewhere.

Furthermore, as others have said, you've got "grandfathered" tanks. When you're guilds MT's have been running forever, they tend to be warriors, so they're typically already in the roll. A guild only needs a couple raid tanks after all.

So, given raid tanks supply greatly exceeds demand; and that there are so many very useful druid specs, and so few druids proportionally... It's inevitable.

I don't think that's the solution either, because then you're essentially putting warriors or paladins or death knights in a bad spot, which isn't fun for those players and isn't fun for those guilds that don't happen to have a feral druid available. Propping up a class through encounter design is bad for that class (e.g., warriors in TBC).

I think the simplest short term solution is a Glyph of Barkskin that makes it a 2 min cooldown for 40% reduction. It's not ideal, because it essentially duplicates the abilities of other classes, but it at least puts us on even footing in the current cooldown-centric climate. Though since they've said that's going to be going away (believe it when I see it), maybe the cooldowns won't be as important. The taunt bonus on T9 is certainly suggestive of radically different encounter design, not that there's been much to indicate it being necessary on the PTR thus far.

Bears really do need to be redesigned almost from the ground up. Our abilities need more interactivity, our mitigation and avoidance need to be more dependent on the dps stats on our gear, rather then flat talent bonuses, but it needs to be done in such a way that we retain the flavor that was established when we came into our own as tanks in TBC. Depending on how you characterize that flavor, this may be a difficult task, as I know at least some people who consider our flavor to be "doing more with less".

Yes more interactivity would be nice, but that's a big design change. I'm not sure about a barkskin glyph however. Glyphs are supposed to be optional, and that sounds a little too far down the mandatory path. If everyone feels complelled to use this glyph (which I think they would) then it's a bad glyph. Doing more with dps stats would be nice; of course this is going to mean a nerf to our standard stamina/dodge/armor to compenstate, as per Savage Defence.

In my experience (Hodir hardmode), bear tanks have to give up quite a bit of stam stacking to hold threat vs other tanks. I can attain stupid health, but at the cost of getting bosses yanked off me repeatedly by great dps. Hodir,Mimi, and Yogg hardmodes require massive threat gen. which we lack w/o stacking more agi vs stam.

I’m an officer, raid leader, and main tank in my guild, so I’m pretty lucky that if I want to tank, I get to tank. Pretty much end of story. Now, my guild is pretty far behind the curve as far as progression goes, and we are fine with that. We can’t all be on the bleeding edge. Heck, a previous poster says they are still working on Yogg 25, and calls his guild bad. Mine hasn’t even seen that far into Uld 25 or 10. We all run at our own pace, and it’s all good.

The thing about bears getting nerfed over and over again isn’t that they become unplayable. My problem is that when I run in PUGs, as I often do to learn fights that my guild isn’t on yet, or just to get a leg up on gear so I can be the best I can be, nerfs hurt my chances to get a tanking spot. When the last patch in BC dropped that nuked our health down at the same time that they nerfed all the raids, I was denied a tanking spot because “Druids just got f***ed with the nerf”. Yeah I lost a few thousand health. But I was still capable. But PUG is less likely to give you a chance. Shoot, it was just a few months ago I was asked if I was defense capped. Obviously a non druid raid leader trying to get a solid tank is going off what he knows. If he knows Druids just took a hit to their HP and don’t know druid tanking very well, he is less likely to give a druid a chance.

That’s my beef with the nerf. I’ve found that while I may log on after a Tuesday patch and have 2k less HP then I did before I am still able to do all the things I used to do. Blizzard isn’t out to ruin my play experience, I’m sure of it. What hurts my play experience is when everybody hears about the nerf, and then assumes I can’t do my job. And it’s hard to convince a PUG other wise when there are 10 DKs in LFG with better cool downs. Just my opinion.

Coley makes a very good point, though I think it applies a lot more broadly than just bears. There's such a bad misunderstanding in the wow community at large, were 'not the best' reads as 'worthless'. While competent players know that it takes a very significant problem to make a class/spec so bad that you wouldn't want a good plater playing it along; pugs tend to become highly judgemental when not really understanding the situation. This attitude the extends to other low and sometimes midrange guilds, and worsens the already bad public impression of the class.

Yes, that's meaningless if you're a member of a stronger guild, but a huge majority of players are not. Blizzard really needs to keep this in mind when repeatedly needing classes. If Random Joe in Dalaran thinks bears are poor tanks, and there are few around to begin with, then he hears they are getting nerfed AGAIN, he's unlikely to give one a chance.

That rolls in, then, with the 'we only need 2-4 tanks' issue. Why let the already (apparently) disadvantaged tank come in when you've already got lots of tanks (your primary tanks, then all the dps dual specs and alts who are itching for thier shot.

These are social problems though. Its not blizzards fault. They really cant control ignorance. If you're stuggling to play wow because people are dumb no matter what, what's the solution? Should blizzard "dumb down" the game, so dumb people dont have an excuse to be dumb any more?

Since my tank is my main, whenever I do a pug, I pretty much take control. Coming from a good raiding guild, I'm nearly always pugging beneath myself. The kinds of players who respond to "nerfs" they know nothing about are not the sort of people I want to play with anyway. Ultimately, I pug for practice, and potentially to meet great new players. But I dont expect Blizzard to fix my bad pugging experiences. They gave us guilds for that purpose.

I used to tank primarily in BC, but haven't tanked more than trash since Wrath's release. Nerf after nerf hasn't made the spec unplayable, but why bother?

If you had a favorite restaurant that you'd been eating at for years, and then suddenly started getting bad service over and over again, would you go back? So why would people want to play a class (or spec in this case) where the majority of the changes being made are all nerfs? I feel like new graphics are being tossed as us as a peace offering.

Yeah but Tyyr, the problem with that argument is that we're still thoroughly fine (OP even) to tank all the current content up to Algy25. Every single boss, every single tanking role, every single hardmode. If they hadnt "nerfed" armor, we'd be at 70k by now. If they hadnt "nerfed" health, we'd be at 65k. You're saying those options - which are thoroughly game breaking - would mean you'd have more fun on your druid?

If people dont like constant readjustments, they should play a 1-shot game with no new content, and no progression over many years, like an FPS.

Let’s also not forget that Druids are getting a 4% to 6% (depending on their AGI or dodge rating) nerf to their Dodge this patch. Doug said that on the PTR he seemed to be taking more damage then on live. That’s probably due to you being hit more then you’re used to. Please don’t say this is being done to all tanks, because other tanks have more types of avoidance then just dodge. It hits Druids the hardest. I don’t gem fully for stam, but with the agi % change I’m starting to think I should. If you nerf stam as well, then I think that I’ll just have to stop bear tanking and have the DK’s and Pally’s in my guild take over. I’ll be much more beneficial to our small 10 man progression guild as cat / resto then a Bear tank.

It's the constant picking that's driving me mad, not the fact that they want to balance the game. I've seen posts and math on blogs/boards all over that predicted a lot of the issues that are occurring. Why the constant band aid fixes?

Cat's got a pretty big overhaul in wrath, but bears need a redesign to something that will scale similarly to other tanks and give us a bit of stability for a while.

It is, quite similar to warriors, that there are fundamental issues with the bear's overall design that make it scale very poorly. Bears have always either gained too little off gear, or too much. As a result, as each tier of gear comes and goes, they need more fiddling to keep them more-or-less balanced.

Not saying it's right or wrong, but that's how it is. Thus, it's my dearest hope that they just "rip the bandaid off fast" and do a serious chunk of redesign for us (and warriors) come the next expansion.

Expansions are the best time for that, as you've got 10 or so levels to "grow" into your new class, you don't need to re-gear yourself mid-tier. It's very much easier to deal with than sudden shifts at level cap.

I honestly believe that a total redesign of a few points is necessary:

1) Overhaul rage mechanic entirely. Likely base it on something more energy-ish, but not a pure copy of energy/combo points - something unique, but more tuneable than rage now.2) A more interesting toolbox for bears, so tanking is more involved than it is now.3) Vastly lowered avoidance, coupled with lower heals and appropriately lessened boss damage.

I had this awesome pipe dream of perhaps a talent that allows bears to aquire combo points, and allows cats to generate rage.

Of course this would be insanely OP unless they really reworked the feral spec. Which would probably make some ridiculous nerfs and make alot of people angry.

But the idea of shifting from bear to cat to use a finishing move or to have full rage when you suddenly need to tank would be awesome, and it would probably involve a method of combat that involved a lot of shapeshifting.

It just does not make sense that this bear... a bear that is smaller than most hunter's pet bears even have armor as good as if not better than plate.

However bears as far as wildlife goes are much more agile than humans. So perhaps a tanking style that involves a whole heap ton of avoidance, and perhaps make bears the tanks that does the highest damage while tanking.

Fix Savage defense and buff it up, make more of our threat rely on the damage we do. Moreso than ever before.

Make us quick agile avoidance and mitagation tanks. Something that has never been seen before in wow. We would have to rethink stuff, but we would definitly be unique as far as tanking goes again.

Derrick, I believe you're wrong about druids not being "allowed" to tank by the average group...Our cat damage right now, even after the last nerf, is still better than Fury Warrior or Ret Pally, but a decent margin. Prots of both classes can tank anything and Most people think "Make them give us the big numbers" when it comes to druids.

Like I said, I hate DPS on my druid. It's not fun. I like tanking, but my tanking slots keep going to people who are less capable of DPS than I. Because Bears keep taking nerfs.

I honestly believe that before the next expansion, only guilds run by feral MTs will have feral MTs. Everyone else is going to be pushed into DPS because they are better at it than the other possible alt-tanks.

Of course, you can't nerf cat too much or you wind up truly back in the vanilla wow world were healing is our only option again. The only real answer is to quit nerfing bears until all 4 tanks can 1) be approximately equalized and 2) pick a friggin niche for each tank and make that niche work.

So I read most of Kalon's blog and it has been excellent. I am in the position of many of you where I have become the main tank of my guild but have seen my position slip recently, first in uld progression it was to a DK tank, and I agreed with that fully especially because of CD utility of DK's in ulduar fights. But just this week I took a back seat to a less geared, less experienced, Pally tank because "they got mad buffs in the patch." Time will tell with that but it has already seemed off base.

But my question that I am debating and can't seem to find a clear answer on is this: With the dodge/agi nerf and the new +30 stam gems, is it worth it to gem straight +30 stam in all slots? (except ones perhaps with a strong stam bonus)

I am in full T8.25 and have almost all non-hardmode bis. I did some elementary math on it today and I can't see why i shouldn't gem all stam? Thoughts would be appreciated.

ThinkTank bio

About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.